Bradley Manning prosecuted for treason, Lyman Lemnitzer not. What’s up with that?

By this time, most readers will have heard of Operation Northwoods. If not, a brief recap: There was tension in the executive branch between the Joint Chiefs and JFK in the early 1960’s, with the brass wanting the new Cuban government that had replaced the brutal Batista regime brought down. They wanted to assassinate Castro, invade and bomb the island. In the meantime, JFK was seeking a diplomatic opening behind the scenes. It’s never so simple that a line or two of prose can describe all of the inner workings, tangents and intrigue that goes on, but that, according to several authors on the subject, is one version of events during that time.

The Joint Chiefs, headed by General Lyman Lemnitzer, drew up a plan designed to draw the American public into supporting a war against Cuba. All of them signed off on it. They proposed the following:

• Stage false flag attacks against Guantanamo using “friendly” Cubans;
• Blow up ammunition dumps inside Guantanamo, and a ship in the harbor there, blaming the Cubans (Remember the Maine!);
• Conduct public funerals for fake victims of Cuban aggression;
• Shoot down an American passenger airliner over Cuban waters, blaming the Cubans.
• Set off bombs in public places in Miami and Washington DC, blaming the Cubans. (“We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington”);
• Sink a vessel full of Cuban refugees in the waters off Florida, and blame the Cubans.

That’s not all of it, but enough. The passenger plane shoot-down is particularly interesting. The plan called for it to take off from Miami, be diverted and replaced by a drone. Pilot, crew and passengers would all be invented names, Todd Beamers, if you will. Their martyrdom would unite the American public behind the attack on Cuba.

Note that this Operation Northwoods was what we now call a “psyop,” and that the target was not Castro or Cuba, but rather the American people. The document turned up in 2001, routinely released forty years after its disclosure would have been useful, when the perps were still alive and could be imprisoned. But it’s telling that all of the Joint Chiefs signed on to this plan, knew of its contents, surely knew it was illegal and treasonous, and feared no repercussions.

The plan was never carried out, as JFK and Robert McNamara nixed it, and so it was filed away. James Bamford, who has made a career writing about the National Security Agency, stumbled on it in a trove of released documents. He wrote about it in his 2001 book Body of Secrets in 2001. This link takes you to an excerpt from the book.

A couple of noteworthy passages: After retaking the island,

Forces would assure rapid essential military control of Cuba. Continued police actions would be required.

Apparently, they did not anticipated support from the majority of the Cuban people. So much for human freedom.

And this:

Any of the contrived situations de above [sic] are inherently, extremely risky in our democratic system in which security can be maintained, after the fact, with very great difficulty. If a decision is made to set up a contrived situation it be [sic] one in which participation by U.S. personnel is limited only the most highly trusted covert personnel.

This feature of the plan, the need to escape personal culpability, is built in to our system to this day. It is called “plausible deniability.”

In the end, JFK fired Lemnitzer. It was a time in our history when electoral politics affected public policy.

I trust the reader knows that we only learned of Operation Northwoods because it was not implemented. Our system allows some openness – that is – we do learn of important activities 35-40 years after the fact. By that time, those who should have served prison terms, lost their pensions and reputations, are dead.
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As the words above indicate, in an open system of government (far less so now than then), it is difficult to “maintain security” (avoid punishment) after the fact. The agents, moles, assassins, technicians have many tools at their disposal to cover their tracks. Whistleblowers are subject to intimidation, murder, loss of perks and benefits, firing, threats to family members, and contrived scandals. (Small aircraft are especially dangerous, but automobile accidents are common too.) So it is highly unusual for even low-level people in government to speak up. Lyman Lemnitzer’s personal secretary typed the Northwoods document. It was treasonous. If she spoke up, there was a price to pay. For her.

In the early 1960’s the words “conspiracy theorist” did not stand for a person with loose screws. In the rest of the world the words carry no particular baggage. The oddity about the taint that the words carry is the simple fact that people conspire. Regular people have extramarital affairs. Cops cover up for one another. Military personnel are strictly embedded in a “chain of command” that cannot be broken even when the law is set aside. Everyone believes in the “Mafia,” a giant conspiracy. Give mobsters a Harvard or Yale degree, and they are no longer criminals, but rather public servants.

All of that is taken for granted, but when powerful people keep secrets from us, as they must, we are ridiculed for trying to understand what goes on behind the curtain. Labeling people of a suspicious bent as unstable is psychological manipulation. Like advertising in general, if affects our behavior without our awareness of its purpose. The degree to which it is pervasive and effective in our society speaks of a regime of thought control. Not only are government and military personnel intimidated and afraid to speak up, but ordinary citizens are as well. The punishment for insiders is real and harmful. For ordinary citizens, it is a scarlet letter. For an open society, we are remarkably under the thumb of power. That is an impressive propaganda achievement, right up there with the fact that most Americans do not know that there is American propaganda.

In the coming days, as the spirit moves me, I intend to get above the nitty-gritty of the Boston bombing, a ridiculously obvious false flag event. Absorption in the details only serves to distract from the most important issues. Here are a few items of greater interest to me:

The overall purpose of this and other fake events. There’s another “Northwoods” document somewhere, signed off on by high offiicals. CIA people and Homeland Security and Craft and Boston police did not just wake up one morning and say “let’s get everyone worked up somehow. Want to plant some fake bombs?” Events like 9/11, Boston and Aurora took intricate planning right down to selection of the patsies. Why are they doing this?

Media complicity. The American news media at all levels is useless, or perhaps very useful in advancement of lies. American journalists are trained to gather some dots, avoid others, and above all never connect them. There appears to be a rigid hierarchy that enforces discipline in avoiding the search for truth, so that our most important “journalists” at all levels pride themselves on never knowing anything useful.

Involvement of regular people in these events. Just as journalists are not aware of their own complicity by avoidance the search for truth, the regular soldiers, cops, medical personnel and yes, actors, involved in these events are not aware that they are part of a much larger scam than a mere “practice drill,” the tool used by the spooks to bring these events to life.

Seeming complicity of just about everyone in the political system. This has to do with a selection process controlled by money that weeds out good people, advances the careers of mediocre ones, and enforces discipline on them. So in politics we mostly have third-rate people kept in place by first-rate criminals.

And finally, the personal price. Bradley Manning is paying a personal price for his activities. Even silly Charlie Sheen paid a price. Paul Wellstone, Mike Connell, Gary Webb, John Edwards, Anthony Weiner, Peter Torricelli and a boatload of Kennedy’s all paid a price. Bush’s, Rove, Cheney, Kissinger, Lemnitzer and Clinton’s sail through life unaffected, enjoying high-profile lives of wealth and fame, no price paid, everything gained, nothing given. For mere mortals like me, the price is a bit of ridicule from fellow citizens, painful, but not at all like the horrors others have endured.

All to follow. I’ve had complaints that I used to write about important stuff, and that mere mention of “crisis actors,” as if they did not really exist, turns people away. In other words, highlighting the problem is a problem.

That’s even poetic.